Today we're going to set aside our sliderules and put on our galoshes, as
we prepare to dig through muddy burial sites high in the Himalayan foothills,
looking for conclusive proof that Neanderthals survive today, hidden away in
the rocky corners of darkest Asia.

I've always loved reading about monsters and ghosts and mysterious creatures.
The thing that first caught my intrigue about the Abominable Snowman was that
the reports are really about two distinct, and very different, species. The
big hairy ape running around the mountains, pursued by Sir Edmund Hillary and
leaving the famous footprint photograph, and plaguing thrill seekers in Disneyland's
Matterhorn, is usually called the Yeti. There are many variations of this name,
but let's stick with Yeti for simplicity. The other species is neither big
nor especially hairy nor much of a snowman. The Almas is most often described
as a small scrawny person, about five feet tall, hairy and stinky and mute
and living in paleolithic squalor up in the foothills of the Himalayas and
into eastern Europe. The description is generally consistent with what we call
a Neanderthal. But since there are no remains or genetic evidence, it could
also just as plausibly be said to match any of several earlier and more primitive
species of the Homo genus.

Really quick history lesson on Neanderthals. They are not an ancestor of modern
humans. Homo neanderthalensis is descended from a separate branch
that split off from the evolutionary tree about 516,000 years ago, according
to some research published in Nature. Mitochondrial DNA studies have
shown conclusively that Homo neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens evolved
separately. As the Cro-Magnon Homo sapiens moved in across Europe
about 45,000 years ago, Homo neanderthalensis was pushed out into
little corners of the world. The last known population died out in the vicinity
of Gibraltar about 24,000 years ago, thus ending their approximately 300,000
year existence.

This was not the only time the Earth was inhabited by significantly different
hominid species. Paranthropus, a member of the muscular and apelike
robust australopithecines, frequently encountered and competed with the more
modern, smaller, and smarter Homo habilis.

And so we have the hypothetical existence of the Almas, replete with evolutionary
precedent. We have a similar precedent for the Yeti from the fossil record. Gigantopithecus was
a prehistoric great ape that stood nine feet tall and weighed three times as
much as a modern gorilla. Its closest relative living today is the orangutan. Gigantopithecus did
live in China and India, in fact it lived generally where the Yeti is said
to exist now. They first appeared about five million years ago and became extinct
only about 100,000 years ago. Like the Neanderthal, they reigned for a long
time and only disappeared in the most recent of evolutionary moments. Recall
that coelacanths were thought to have gone extinct almost 100 million years
ago, and they gave us quite a surprise in 1938 when they reappeared and proved
us wrong.

So we've got our hypothesis, now let's look at some of the best known stories
that the hypothesis is attempting to explain.

In the mid-1800's, so the story goes, hunters in the present day country of
Georgia captured a wild woman they named Zana. She is variously described as
tall, muscular, strong, hairy, and extremely resistant to cold. She was kept
in a village and gradually became more domesticated, though she never learned
to speak. Zana had a number of children, presumably as a result of her fondness
for drinking great quantities of wine and falling into a deep sleep. She died
about 1890 and was buried in the village. A number of Russian researchers have
followed up on the story of Zana. Though no evidence survives of her existence,
there were plenty of interviewees who knew Zana's children. She had four children
who survived, all of whom grew up as relatively normal humans, though they
were said to have dark skin and great strength. Only one burial site could
be located, that of a son named Khwit who died in 1954. Khwit's skull has been
examined with mixed results, and there's a picture of it on the transcript
for this episode at Skeptoid.com, so you can judge for yourself. The skull
is believed to be at the Moscow State University Institute of Anthropology.
I was not able to find any reports of any DNA testing on the skull.

Update: DNA testing has been done on both Khwit and some of Zana's other living descendants. She was 100% Sub-Saharan African, genetically completely normal, and had probably been brought to the region as a slave by the Ottomans.

A Shanghai newspaper reported in 1988 that hair samples collected from wildmen
in the mountains of central China are definitely not human. China has a long
association with wildmen; in fact, in 1976 the Chinese Academy of Sciences
sent a team of 110 people to try and capture one that was said to have accosted
six government officials. China also has its own story of a woman who was attacked
by wildmen in 1940 and bore them a child, who was said to have dark skin and
great strength. During World War II, Mongolian servicemen patrolling the Chinese
border opened fire on what they supposed was a group of saboteurs, but found
to their surprise that they had killed apelike creatures. Unfortunately, if
this actually happened, nobody thought to photograph it or save any samples.
Like Zana, the Chinese wildmen are generally said to be large, muscular and
hairy, pretty much the opposite of what we know of Neanderthals. In fact it
sounds more like a Gigantopithecus. If Zana was a Gigantopithecus,
she could not have borne children from a human father; the genomes are simply
too different. But what if she was a Neanderthal? It's not impossible. The
Max Planck Institute is actually in the process of assembling a Neanderthal
genome, from a fragment of femur found in Croatia in 1980. Until the genome
is complete we won't know for certain whether it was possible for Homo
sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis to interbreed. Most DNA testing
done so far indicates that if humans and Neanderthals ever did interbreed,
it was not at a significant level.

So now we've got a fair handle on the landscape of evidence in front of us,
and now we can take a skeptical look at what we've got. Basically, nothing.
We have some vaguely plausible hypotheses — yeah, I suppose it's possible that
relic Neanderthals and Gigantopithecus or even some descendant of Paranthropus could
survive in remote parts of Asia — but that's all we really have, a hypothesis.
A hypothesis is a provisional explanation for these stories of wildmen in captivity
and bearing children. There are stories of Almas from all over Asia from all
time periods, just like we have reports of Bigfoot in the American Northwest.
What's lacking is evidence that can be tested. The existence of Khwit's skull,
and yet the lack of trumpeted headlines in the scientific journals, suggests
that nothing remarkable has been learned from the skull, which tends to cast
suspicion on the Zana story.

Skepticism is not out to prove a negative, so I'm not going to say that the
Almas does not exist. Science looks at the evidence, and makes a conclusion.
With the Almas, we have an absence of evidence, which is not evidence of absence.
By not expressing a belief in the Almas, critical thinkers are not being closed-minded.
Indeed, we remain extremely open to any evidence that can be presented. DNA
testing and genomes make this all much easier and more precise, so bring it.

Discuss!

Apparently Neanderthals genes are widely distributed around the world, with 2 to 3% of most peoples genes comprised of Neanderthals genes. Perhaps we're all hybrids.

Paul, VancouverOctober 23, 2011 11:03am

Thats another hold the press thing Paul.

Whilst the data and its inference on us and homo neanderthalensis appears pretty good, subsequent claims in journal literature show that we may be arguing a long time about genetic forebears and splits therefrom.

Mud, Sin City NSW, OzOctober 24, 2011 4:47am

I think you make an usual mistake when talking about the fossil record. And this would be: fossilization is an extremely uncommon process, and we have a fossil record for a really small amount of the living creatures at any given moment. For example, just in the last decade we have discovered two new homos who shared the world with us, H. Denisova (a cousin of Neanderthals living in Asia) and H. Florisienses (The indonesian "hobbits"). So it is possible that Almas represent a relic population of an unknow hominid. I think, however, they represent the folk memory of an unknow hominid, maybe one who managed to survive until the last milleniums before our era, or why not, maybe even later. Asia is a nearly unfathomable big area, after all...

Leirus, MadridMarch 13, 2012 4:57am

I would suggest the term preservation when discussing "recently" (ie carbon datable) individuals.

I think Leirus has just made a profound statement on natural selection..if preservation is common, there were hardly any other species at all.

Still, that even puts one hell of a nail in the coffin of creationists argument

Mud, Sin City, NSW, OzMarch 23, 2012 8:00pm

I've always been fascinated by the thought of non-sapien homo species still around and what we would treat them like!! Left alone like some of the Amazonian natives are or would we be sticking them in a lab - or a zoo :(

We have only been looking for fossil humans for a hundred or so years and are finding out stuff all the time, like at some stage in Africa there were maybe three or four human ancestors living at once in various geographic areas. Some research indicating that after the OOA event 'African' humans mated with an yet unidentified 'species' of 'human'.

Any extant non-sapiens must be pretty small populations - for we have not any 'evidence' for them - and small populations are not good for a specie's survival.

How much of the lore is misidentified sightings of common animals and how much is just bull for a good story?

Who knows, we found a new species that we never suspected and who died out during our branch's time, so maybe out there, is a cousin, but I do wonder if we will need debate over what to do about 'contact'.

David Healey, Maidenhead, UKSeptember 13, 2012 9:01am

That would be fine once we get past the point of actually finding extant others in the genus.

A point to be made here is should such an unlikely event occur, would we be able to maintain their environment or actually have to move such non sapients to "protective custody"?

Its a reminder of what we are and our diverse view on preservation and preservation methodologies.

We have only taken a little notice of our own known cousins very recently and sadly, many of the rest of us consider them in the range of fair game to slightly edible.

How would we react to a new species of homo?

No where near as aptly as we react to myth about other species (or near enough) of homo.

Please pass the blurry lens filter. Thats vaselined grade 10.

Magnanamous Dinoflagellate, sin city, OzJune 21, 2013 7:18am

They say the Neanderthals were not so smart. So if anyone is looking for modern day Neanderthals, one has to look no further than the halls of congress!

Kevin, Naples, FLJuly 9, 2013 4:02pm

They successfully got elected, which means they duped a lot of people, which in turn means they're a lot smarter than a lot of people want to think they are.

Another Nick, Alexandria VAJuly 9, 2013 6:13pm

A bit unfair as its entirely likely that anyone who isnt pure african is supposed to have re-established neanderthal genes.

That may sound a tad eccentric (wrt non africans) but specific Neanderthal and other genetics are claimed and supported by current supported hypotheses.

These arent racist hypotheses, they are best fit to best technologies. The same technologies that make great inferences to medicine that just appears to be science fiction at present.

There is nothing like quality and verifiability to underpin technologies of the future.

Where that leaves gargle like alt med and psuedo science is painfully obvious/

A lot of people make inference on the lack of focus..

Madime Dantefer, Greenacres by the sea OzAugust 14, 2013 5:49am

"They say the Neanderthals were not so smart. So if anyone is looking for modern day Neanderthals, one has to look no further than the halls of congress!"
- Kevin, Naples, FL
July 09, 2013 4:02pm

....or Canada's parliament; or a provincial legislature; or any one of our city councils.....

"They successfully got elected, which means they duped a lot of people, which in turn means they're a lot smarter than a lot of people want to think they are."
- Another Nick, Alexandria VA
July 09, 2013 6:13pm

....but then again I could be wrong. Maybe the lefty morons that elected them are the stoopid neaderthals....

Ron, Calgary Alberta CanadaApril 29, 2014 10:39am

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